Notas sobre la traducción española de L'art de faire l'indienne à l'instar de l'Angleterre de don Miguel Suárez y Núñez (1771)

My purpose in this article is two-fold. First, to provide a series of notes on specialized vocabulary in the field of textile manufacture in 18th-century Spain as used in a translation from the period and as revealed by a comparative analysis with its French source text. This Spanish translation was produced by Miguel Jerónimo Suárez y Núñez, a well-known and prolific technical translator of the 1700s. The cursory analysis will reiterate a commonplace for scholars of 18th-century Spanish: translations from the French heavily influenced the technical and scientific Spanish of the Enlightenment, most notably its technical vocabulary. But it is when it is contextualised that this translated treatise acquires explanatory relevance. Thus, secondly, I speculate on the potentially important role of French translations in 18th-century Spanish economic policy vis-à-vis its textile industry. Translations of foreign technical manuals like this may have contributed to offset the adverse effects of restrictions placed on the international recruitment of textile craftsmen and experts in the printing of fabrics by competing European nations.